I wrote this up while watching Nick Robinson’s “The Truth About Immigration”. After it was over, I rearranged a few things, but except for the last couple of paragraphs it was nearly all written as I watched. However, after having digested it for a minute, I think I can sum the whole thing up much more briefly.

Nick Robinson: How is it that a subject that was once taboo is now on every poltician’s lips? Why is it that the doors to Britain were flung open and what are the benefits and what are the perils of now seeking to close them?

Why is it now a major issue and what is the truth about immigration?

Shorter fisking: What Robinson covers is all old hat. See the BBC’s “White” Series for evidence that most of what he rehashes has been done before. In addition, everyone by now knows what Labour did and why. This is a dishonest discussion if one side of the issue is a strawman. Most people do not want to close the door, full stop. I suppose that makes for good TV, but it’s not honest.

What is the truth? Why is this issue now such a big deal that the BBC feels obligated to go over all this again? Aside from the obvious current event of Bulgarian and Roma(nian) immigration, Spot the missing murder of Lee Rigby with the murderer explaining himself on camera. Spot the missing no-go areas. Spot the missing imams preaching jihad. Spot the missing grooming gangs of Rochdale and Manchester. Spot the missing mass murders of 7/7. Spot the missing discussion about how the BBC got it wrong as well, which was part of Robinson’s statement to the Mail.

I think that about sums up the BBC’s approach to the truth.

Longer version, if anyone’s interested:

So we’re expected to believe that the BBC’s original Young Conservative is straying off the reservation, are we? Sorry, no.

It’s all a big deal now, we’re told. Illegal immigrants are being told to go home. Robinson emphasized “illegal”. And what, exactly, were illegal immigrants being told until this national conversation hit an all time high? Oh, sorry, wrong national debate. I was momentarily stunned by hearing a BBC journalist use the words “illegal” and “immigrants” in the same sentence. I’m just so used to hearing them censor that word in their dishonest reporting about the issue in the US.

Notice the footage Robinson chooses to accompany that line. The police are clearly approaching someone who has just snuck across the border. This is an entirely different topic than the real concerns about immigration in Britain. By conflating the two from the outset, Robinson has already muddied the waters. Whoops, that’s a racist comment these days, isn’t it?

Nick’s Big Question: Why is it now a major issue?

Answer: Anything except third-world extremely fundamentalist Muslims coming in en masse and setting up segregated enclaves and not only maintaining those extremely fundamentalist behaviors and refusing to integrate, but causing certain local problems and then being enabled by politicians, police, and a BBC willing to kowtow to any demand in the name of political correctness and to give two fingers to their political opponents, as well as because they’re afraid.

I hadn’t even watched seven minutes of this before I could see it’s mostly a load of tired old talking points, and would ultimately be a dishonest approach to the issue. If the issues Robinson presents as the main concerns weren’t already talked about enough to be well covered, why did the BBC do that whole “White” Series a few years ago? What was “The Poles Are Coming” about, then? It was a deliberate attempt to control the national debate on this issue, and to demonize those who thought it might be a problem. If it wasn’t already a well-known concern, why was Mrs. Duffy such a story? The BBC was just as quick to paint her as a racist as any politician was.

And what about “White Girl”? That particular facet of the immigration issue was entirely absent from Robinson’s supposed truth about it. And let’s not pretend it’s not the main reason immigration is a hotter topic than ever.

Nick Robinson and the BBC think you’re all stupid. We could tell from their reactions to public complaints about Mandelapalooza, and Evan Davis more recently gave DB a hint of it: they hold you in contempt, now more than ever.

Another question – in two parts – left unanswered: If so many immigrants were needed, as Robinson states, to fill all those jobs, how many British people were unemployed at the time and why are there so many more now? Secondly, why was unlimited immigration the answer instead of training the citizens? Surely there must be a difference in cost – on several levels – between the two options. As was evident from the “The Poles Are Coming” episode, the “lazy British” Narrative has become an immutable object at the BBC. Now they don’t even think it’s worth addressing. It’s a given. Not a single moment was spent asking about what to do with the unemployed youth in Britain.

(Side note to Nick Robinson and his producer: You really should have resisted the temptation to use the cute “boom and bust” reference there. It only highlighted how dishonest the BBC has been about that issue as well.

Other side note: I admit it’s nice to see Nick Robinson presenting politicians as being scheming and damaging rather than protecting and defending them, like he did for the Blair/Brown relationship or as the expenses scandal was at its height.)

I’ll grant that it’s good that Robinson got Labour politicians to admit how slimy they were on their policy, but if it’s just David Blunkett saying they were “on the side of the angels”, and Jack Straw saying Labour got it wrong, then the debate gets shifted to whether they were right or not, rather than how dishonest they were the entire time. Yvette Cooper was shown as trying to have it both ways, so nothing enlightening there, either.

Robinson, being of course ruled by the BBC’s requirement to remain impartial, leaves it there. For balance against three Labour politicians, two of whom essentially defended the policy without much reservation, we got Michael Howard. Oh, right, Robinson himself is supposed to count as being on the Right in this case, yeah.

The one saving grace of this entire hour was the part where Robinson showed non-white immigrants complaining about the same things that concerned the first round of complainers, meaning it can’t be called racist anymore. I know a couple people here have brought that up recently, and I imagine it would come as quite a shock to those who trust the BBC for their news on important issues. Unfortunately, it’s easy to predict that the BBC will forget all about that immediately and will be quickly back to calling it racist.

So David Cameron is putting a limit on “net immigraton” is he? How will that work out, Nick? No prizes for guessing. To make matters more pathetic, after going over the whole “We needed mass immigration to fill the jobs” theme, Robinson takes that to the next level to show that you need mass immigration to fill all those student slots at universities. Apparently, the university system will be economically threatened if you worry about the questionable student applicants and don’t let in enough proper ones.

Then we get to work permits. Um, what’s this about skills and the ability to speak English? Didn’t we meet some Eastern European kids who were picking strawberries and were told this is an example of the kind of jobs Britain vitally needs filling? Aren’t those the low-wage jobs lazy British young people won’t do, so limiting immigration to skilled workers will harm the economy? Of course that’s so, and Robinson is keen to tell you later on. He doesn’t have to come out and say it at this point, as that wouldn’t be, you know, impartial.

Then Robinson says that Cameron’s statement about allowing in skilled workers needed now (chefs in the shown example) – but he wants to train the next generation of home-grown workers – is a “blunt” message to stop hiring foreigners. Blah, blah, blah. This makes it all the more lame that Robinson didn’t flat out ask the practical question about training and unemployment I mentioned above.

Ultimately, Robinson tells us, immigration is a great net benefit to Britain. The only question now, apparently, is what’s the best plan to make it work more smoothly in future.

No. That’s not the question at all. Robinson asked at the start, why is this such a big deal now? He doesn’t dare touch the real answer.

I know why the BBC can’t touch the real answer. It’s because those of you who do want to shut the door (or at least put much more stringent limits than Cameron wants) want it shut mainly – and are talking about it more loudly than ever before, which is allegedly also what Robinson is meant to be investigating – because of the factors the BBC refused to address. So they just have to present that side of the argument as some phantasm. Everyone on camera is talking about limits, amd figuring out some common sense, not shutting it down, full stop. Yet Robinson frames that side of the argument in its extreme version. He and his producer know full well what they’re doing. This only makes it more galling that he avoided discussion of the BBC’s influence in the whole thing, after recently saying they made a “horrible mistake”.

This is a major public debate like never before because of things like the murder of Lee Rigby and the seemingly endless stream of stories about Muslim grooming gangs, not because a few Slovenians are picking strawberries for less than Wayne and Kaylee get on the dole. The primary reason it’s such a big deal now that even the BBC has to admit it is the reality of things like Tower Hamlets and Anjem Choudary, not Polish glass workers who moonlight as DJs and Bangladeshi students wearing the hijab at some hip university. That shot of the latter from the part where Robinson is discussing the need for students is almost like they’re taunting you. The only reason I’m noticing something subliminal is because I’ve been prepared to notice it. Perhaps they’re so far out of reality and intellectual honesty that they don’t realize what they’ve done.

Sure, Robinson at least briefly lays out the more general concerns along the way about too much pressure on communities and services, jobs, benefit migration, and people feel like they’re losing their own neighborhoods. But the only time Islam comes up is when he casually mentions that the Muslim population has rapidly doubled, as if it’s just another color in the rainbow.

If one thinks that the real reason unlimited immigration is such a hot-button topic right now is limited to jobs, then one will feel that Robinson has successfully opened the way for a more honest debate about the pros and cons of immigration. But it surely can’t be an honest debate if he reduces one side of the argument to some people wanting to “shut the door once again”. He doesn’t present anyone as saying they want the polar opposite of unlimited immigration, so why the reductio ad absurdum for only one side?

“Perhaps it’s time to have that open and frank discussion we’ve really never had.”

If only. And this documentary avoided that frank discussion at every turn. The BBC can now claim to have successfully addressed the issue, but they will only be lying to themselves, and to you. So where was the part where Robinson talked about how the BBC got it wrong? Where was the part where Robinson discussing how and why the BBC made a “horrible mistake” in suppressing concerns about unlimited immigration? The BBC has more influence on the national debate of every issue than any politician or political party could ever hope to achieve in their wildest dreams. Blaming politicians and I guess the media in general ignores the very real influence and deliberate policy the BBC had on the issue over the last decade, and still has now. This documentary is evidence of their desire to influence it.

“It is quite widely known that ‘child asylum seekers’ are a scandal, with many young adults claiming to be minors for all the benefits and care that being ‘child’ reufgee brings, including the chance to be supported at school for a couple of years , improving your English and gaining some qualifications before havign to support yourself in Britain.

Chris Warburton standing in for Victoria Derbyshire was interviewing two such people this morning, who came here, supposedly as ‘child asylum seekers’.

The female from Afghanistan claimed that she had left the country with her uncle and had no idea where she was going, only that she was ‘leaving the country’. Of course Warburton laps up every word, apparently with no inclination yto question the more outrageaous claims of these people.

It seems common sense that since her uncle would have had to pay a large sum of money to the traffickers to take them half way across the world to Britain, he would have insisted on being reassured that their final destination would be Britain, and that they wouldn’t be dumped across the border in Kazakhstan or even Turkey. Greece, or France! Why are these questions never asked?

One cannot help but feel the BBC are so in cahoots with these interviewees, they probably pre advise them and stage the sob stories designed to convince hand wriinging Brits of the need to be eeven more genrous towards these colonisers.”

A Biased BBC reader was listening to the PM yesterday and has this to say..

“Towards the end of the PM programme we were promised they were going to talk about the census figures, which they admitted showed the biggest ever population increase (although still obviously a gross under count, no mention of the 1.4 million forms that weren’t returned). I guess the BBC thought they’d done their bit to show how unbiased they were with the bare facts, because then we are told, predictably, the unusual propaganda, this was caused firstly by us ‘living longer’, secondly by our higher birthrate (no mention of the groups causing the higher than European average of course) and only lastly by immigration.

We were then read comments by three listeners, the first,the only anti immigration, was read in a silly slightly petulant voice, the second was rather interesting in that it was from some liberal hair shirter who was attempting to put the *moral* argument for Open Borders which nobody with an ounce of pragmatism in their bones can support, even the majority who take a soft hearted approach. The last was a second generation immigrant who took the totally fallacious line of presenting a synopsis of her mothers life as an example of the (rare?) ‘model citizen’ immigrant and then demanded that we shouldn’t have it in for immigrants, falsely conflating personal dislike of immigrants with dislike of mass immigration and concerns about overpopulation.”

The demographics in the Census are explosive and the BBC has done everything to sanitise them and to make us feel warm and content that it will all work out well. It won’t, they are wrong but there will be no debate on it.

(UPDATE: See my comment below) I was going to comment about this in the open thread, but in the light of today’s noise about the housing benefit shuffle in Newham causing “social cleansing” and allegedly inspiring right-wing extremism, I thought it was worth a full post. I’m talking about the BBC’s revelation that immigration from Mexico into the US is being reversed.

The rate of Mexican immigration to the US has stalled or maybe even gone into reverse, an analysis shows, ending a four-decade-long trend.

Not may, it has. The Pew figures (NB: pdf file automatic download) quoted by the BBC pretty much show that. The reason I’m bringing it up is because of the illegal factor. It’s important to remember that the BBC has generally taken the activists’ line and used their language in reporting on the issue in the US. Remember Mark Mardell’s jaunt to the Arizona border (page 4 of the open thread) and the other reports trying to tell you it was all about racism against people with brown skin and a Mexican accent? Then there are the other reports siding with illegals and playing the race game. The fact that these people are in the US illegally is somehow not their fault, but the fault of unfair laws which magically make them illegal ex post facto or something. The real objection wasn’t, of course, about immigration of non-whites, but about illegal immigration.

Activists – mostly Hispanic – always play that qualifier down, if not wipe it from the discussion entirely. And the BBC played right along. So it must have come as something of a shock to the BBC News Online producer who had to skim through the Pew report and discover that last year there were more illegal Mexicans in the US than legal ones: 6.1 million to 5.8 million. So why didn’t the BBC ever discuss that disparity last year when they were freaking out about the Arizona law and all those other states trying to stem the tide of illegals? The rest of us knew the problem was about illegals, and said so at the time. Yet the BBC tried to play it as racism anyway. When Mark Mardell tries to whip up a little anger by shoving in your face Pat Buchanan’s racialist diatribe about losing “white America” to the Mexicans, it’s all part of this Narrative. Forget about the illegal issue and focus on race. It ends the debate before it begins. But the BBC approves when Hispanics vote for their own kind based solely on ethnicity.

It must also come as a shock to those who rely on the BBC for the news on US issues to learn that the first black President has in fact been deporting record numbers of illegals with brown skin back to Mexico. How can that be racism, BBC? Is He a puppet or something on this issue? I’d love to know how they square this with their belief in Him. I remember when Mardell was actually for a moment trying to defend the President (page 8 of the open thread) against charges that He wasn’t protecting the border properly. Obviously He wasn’t, since there were more illegals than legals last year. Mardell is silent, of course.

It’s important to make this distinction when reporting on the US issue of immigration law, because, as the Newham article doesn’t show, the problem in Britain is about mostly quite legal immigration. There’s a huge difference in the cause and effect in the UK from what’s been happening in the US. Which is why it’s wrong for the BBC to conflate the two situations and play racialist games.

If xenophobia is (I’m speaking hypothetically for the moment) a primary factor in British objection to seemingly unlimited legal immigration of third-world Mohammedans, this still has nothing to do with US objection to illegal immigration of Mexicans. There is a world of difference between the two. Why has the BBC been unable to make this distinction? I say it’s because they’re viscerally opposed to restrictions on immigration simply out of reflexive fealty to the abstract notions of diversity and multiculturalism, as well as a reflexive opposition to any nominally conservative policy.

I’ve previously mentioned how the BBC hired German immigrant Franz Strasser (middle of page 4 of the open thread) to tour the country reporting on immigration in the US in all its various colors. The reason I criticized every single report in that series was because he and his editor dishonestly censored the word “illegal” (middle of page 7) out of the whole picture. Even when he was doing reports from two different “Sanctuary Cities” (middle of page 4 of that same thread), which deliberately flouted US immigration law to harbor illegals. He acted as if this didn’t exist. The whole series was conceived and design to whitewash (see what I did there) the illegal issue so that you’d all think any objection to immigration had to be based in racism. Now here are hard figures to show that there really has been a problem with illegal immigration.

The BBC article about the Pew study notes that “immigration” is going to be a big issue in this election year, but still cannot bring themselves to add the “illegal” qualifier, which is actually what it’s all about. The situation is not the same, yet they still pretend it is.

Now that illegal immigration is down, even seeing a negative trend, one has to suspect that the policies have been working. Too bad Britain doesn’t even have the level of sovereignty that Arizona does. Oh, and I guess this means that Global Warming won’t be driving all of them into the US after all.

Still, it’s nice to see the BBC at last revealing even the tiniest bit of truth about what’s been going on over here. But it’s a shame that they don’t make an effort to correct the false impression they’ve been creating about the concern over illegal immigration in the US.

But a few days ago, BBC presenter Justin Webb was engaging in wild speculation concerning the motivations that lay behind the killings in Toulouse. Here, B-BBC contributor Alan captures his thoughts.

20th march

Justin Webb

‘There are some who wonder that some politicians,including perhaps Mr Sarkozy must bear some responsibility, not necessarilyfor what happened, but for the context in which it happened. They are accused of creating a climate of suspicionabout, possibly even hatred, of minority groups.’

Agnes Poirier:

‘We couldn’t make a link between the killing of thesoldiers and little kids…what is emerging is that these are the faces ofdiverse France and obviously it becomes then extremely apparent that the killershould want to assassinate diverse France.’

Webb:

‘That is the point…do we accept it is possible at leastthat this killer seemed to be motivated by wanting to attack the way thatmodern France looks and that of course has been part of the presidentialcampaign. French Interior Minister Claude Gueant became a verycontroversial figure a few weeks ago when he said ‘For us not all civilisationsare of equal value.’ Do you think these kind of remarks should not havehappened? Is it acceptable for people to talk about subjects ofpolitical controversy?’

Agnes Poirier;

‘The constant stirring of stereotypes is unhelpful and isan unhealthy debate in France.’

Interesting that Webb thinks any talk of immigration andintegration makes for ‘controversial politics’….and perhaps should not bespoken of….but that has always been BBC policy and look where such lack ofmoral fibre and backbone and failure to challenge cultural beliefs andactivities leads us:

‘The British public have not got their teeth into any ofthis, not least because it is so hard for the full facts to be put tothem…..vested interests discourage too close a scrutiny of the evidence.

It is a matter of the gravest concern that Westerndemocracies are not only failing to monitor properly the activities of radicalimams but allowing the Islamic studies centres to mushroom, totally out ofcontrol. They are making radicalisation and ideological transfer easier, notharder, and increasing the security risk rather than containing it. In Britain, it is actually official government policy toexpand the teaching of Islamic studies so that every single Muslim student inthe UK will be able to take this subject. Wherever Islamists go on the attack, all are driven bythe same malign and violent hatred of the West and its current foreign securityinterests.’

“The BBC are stillingtrying to spin immigration figures and downplay the extent of immigration tothis country despite Mark Thompson’s admission that they had not covered thesubject properly in years past. The Telegraph reports the figures from government based on the yearly periodJune to June….June 2010 they were 235,000, by June 2011 they were250,000….so definitely a rise when comparing years.

The BBC has decided to take a different starting point, September 2010…butstill finishes in June 2011. September, the total net immigration would havebeen 255,000 for the year sept 2009 to sept 2010. As the total for June 2011was 250,000 the BBC have claimed this means that essentially immigration issteady and has not risen.

You could interpret it as it actually is….that immigration rose in Sept 2010and has continued at that high level ever since. This is of course the exact opposite trick they play with temperatures whenreporting climate change….here they ignore the plateau of 14 or so years thattemperatures have remained unchanged and claim there is a trend of risingtemperature despite this levelling off. Using the same analogy as the BBC for temperature you would have to sayimmigration is showing a rising trend. (and net migration is a figure which hides a lot…because 500,000 nativeBritish might emigrate, 500,000 foreigners immigrate here and the net figurewould be zero….but in effect you would have a much larger immigrantpopulation percentage wise in the UK slipping under the radar.)”

There are certain touchstone issues that inflame BBC bias. I’m sure we can name several of them; Israel, Afghanistan, Global Warming, Capitalism….and Immigration. Today has been relentlessly pushing the line that despite the fact the 370,000 immigrants to the UK are on Welfare this is a big ho-hum because only around 2% of this number are ripping us off by claiming that which they are not entitled to. If you listen here, you will hear Sir Andrew Green (polite cove but not pushing the issue too forcefully) getting dusted up by Matt Kavanagh of the IPPR “Thinktank” and John Humphyrs. (By the way, why wasn’t the IPPR “thinktank” introduced as left-leaning, in the interests of fairness?) The narrative here was that this is all much ado about nothing. Immigrants bring so much benefit to us that is almost impolite to mention the Big Issue flogging Bulgarians and Romanians who then rip us taxpayers off. It’s a big ho-hum. Kavanagh was virtually yawning with boredom that the issue was even being discussed. The BBC was not finished, however, and Coalition Minister Chris Grayling was then dragged into the Today star chamber to be also given a verbal pounding by Humpyrys. Just listen to the tone of his voice. Unbiased? Also note how the BBC has erased Labour’s pernicious destruction of our borders from 1997 to 2010 and chooses to present unfettered Immigration as an issue that only started in 2010. This enables Labour to then claim some sort of surreal moral superiority on the very problem THEY created. It’s amazing stuff.

“In case anyone missed it, the Victoria Drbyshireshow on 10/01/12 had a typical discussion about the recent report stating that immigration had a negative effect on jobs (only for youths aparently).I did listen to as much as I could stand at the time,immigrants work harder, speak, read and write better than Brits,etc. (Not including journalists and their like obviously). This is to be expected of course and I am in no way remotely offended by such talk! I’m not allowed to be!

What really jumped out towards the end was a figure called Jonathan Portes from NIESR (yawn). After completely rubbishing Migrationwatch claiming that “they don’t understand statistics” he scoffs at Sir Andrew Green comparing Manchester with Windsor and the unemployment levels in each only to admit that of course there are far more people in Manchester seemingly unaware that he is AGREEING with Migrationwatch that more people in an area will inevitably mean less jobs! Well said that man! Still available on beeb site/ VD show and timed at about 1h13m in to programme”

Except BBC journalists don’t issue warnings on Twitter about left-leaning lobbyists, do they? I shouldn’t have to point this out, but as it’s increasingly clear that Ms Bradley lacks basic common sense and can’t keep her politics to herself, I feel I have to spell it out for her in terms even she might understand. Impartial BBC. “Warning… rightwing.” Duh!

This tweet about Migration Watch once again sheds light on conventional opinion within BBC newsrooms. If there are people out there who really think that the BBC’s impartiality guidelines safeguard its journalism against the political views of its overwhelmingly left-wing staff then, well, they’re even bigger idiots than Jane Bradley clearly is.

I’m sure you will have been following the BBC coverage of the “Open Borders” issue. Now like everyone else, I expect that UK borders are securely guarded and I have grave doubts regarding Theresa May’s abilities anyway. HOWEVER, the BBC is clearly pursuing a conquer and divide approach to this story, as is all too evident in this coverage;

The suspended UK Border Force chief Brodie Clark has been treated with “contempt” by Home Secretary Theresa May, his union officials have said. The First Division Association’s Paul Whiteman said: “It is astonishing the home secretary [declared] him guilty before he had a chance of responding.”

The BBC is giving full spin benefit to those Trade Unionists who are out to get the head of May and save that of Clark. There is the continual meme that May has failed, that she was secretly behind the neglect of duty, and May must go but I don’t quite recall the same BBC focus given to spectacular failings of successive Labour Home Secretaries who presided over vast numbers of illegals getting into our country.

Given how porous our borders are, you have to admire the bare-faced cheek of fake Children’s Charity. They were on the BBC this morning to bitch about Government daring to stop and detain children at airports and ports. Spokesman Enver Solomon demonstrates a lamentable lack of wisdom although as ever it is only his point of view that we hear.

Here’s another “Viewpoint” from the Left. And it’s a real insight into the beliefs of the Left and the BBC on this particular issue. When I directly associate this viewpoint with the BBC, I do it because this essay didn’t happen randomly or spontaneously: it was predetermined by a BBC editor, as are all these “Viewpoint” pieces. They want something on a given topic, and they go out and find someone to do it. So I believe it’s quite fair to tie the BBC to Goodwin’s mast (or is the other way around?) In any case, here it is:

The opening section is a classic example of using an outlier to make a point about the main group. You’ll never guess who academic Matthew Goodwin chose to use as his example of a BNP member. But first, as this is a classically structured piece from an academic-type, Goodwin has to do the exposition, in which he sets the scene for his protagonist.

Sharon was born and raised in the local village. She knew everyone, and devoted much of her spare time to helping the Residents Association. She was never really that interested in politics. Her husband was a Conservative, but she only went along to the meetings because she liked the sandwiches.

So we the “A” theme: an ordinary citizen, a good neighbor, etc., someone who was never politically active before. Now for the “B” theme.

But then, over the years, things began to change. For Sharon, it seemed as though the way of life she had become accustomed to was under threat.

She talked about feeling a sense of injustice about what had been perpetrated on her fellow citizens – our increasing involvement with Europe, the loss of our manufacturing base, a dwindling sense of respect among young people and the creeping advance of political correctness.

You can all guess what’s coming next, right?

But more than anything, she was concerned about a new phase of immigration into the country. She was profoundly anxious, especially about the impact of this rapid and unsettling change on her friends and loved ones.

Her concern wasn’t simply about the economy. It stemmed from her feeling that British culture, values and the national community were under threat.

This is not meant to be a strawman (woman), because Goodwin’s agenda is not merely to strike it down. He’s got a much bigger point to make. So on to the development section. So far, this is someone whom we could easily dismiss as being the usual xenophobic Little Englander, who hangs the St. George Cross out her window even when there’s no sports tournament going on. But then we get the shocking revelation about our Sharon, meant to focus your concern:

Sharon was Jewish, and the party that she decided to join was the British National Party.

This is very clever. By using this outlier, whom Goodwin believes should cause some cognitive dissonance in his readers, he can instantly claim that the awful beliefs of the BNP are spreading far beyond the usual white suspects.

Though aware of its history of anti-Semitism and holocaust denial, for her the far right was the only movement that was serious about tackling the threat from Islam.

As if it’s only the far right who are concerned about it. Right there we have the Narrative. Any concern about the specific type of Islamic immigration is “far right”. The development of her tale continues, in which Goodwin tells us of the approbation Sharon faced from her friends, neighbors, and even her boss, as well as abuse from the local anti-fascist kiddies.

Sharon told me she could handle all of that, but what really hurt, she explained, was that she was reviled by the very people that she was fighting to protect.

Now the big picture, Goodwin’s main goal here, is starting to come together.

When I asked Sharon why, despite all of these consequences, she carries on there was little hesitation: “Because doing nothing is not an option. I am fighting for the survival of my people.”

“My people”, as in the British people. I must say it’s very refreshing to see something allowed through the BBC in which a Jew is presented identifying herself as British without hints of dual loyalty. Better still, Goodwin doesn’t present this is as Jew vs. Muslim, either. He uses her as an example of how the “far right” concern about how extreme immigration policies are harming British culture is spreading. That, to Goodwin and the BBC, is a very, very serious problem.

So he starts with the scaremongering.

I spent the next four years travelling up and down the country to interview some of the most committed followers of the far right. Conventional wisdom tells us there is something “wrong” with people like Sharon. Implicit in the stereotypes is that they are driven by crude racism, irrational impulses, and psychological problems.

The inadequacy of these stereotypes became quickly apparent during the interviews. On the whole, most of the activists appeared as relatively normal people.

What a shock, eh? Who could have imagined? Although notice how anyone concerned is still labeled “activist”. Goodwin realizes that it’s ordinary, apolitical, non-activist people feeling this way (hence his use of our Sharon to set the scene), but can’t process it. They’re still all activists to him. In other words, this is not an ordinary concern, held by ordinary people who don’t have a specific agenda of any kind. The next bit is very revealing of his and the BBC’s mindset, though. Check out the attitudes laid out, as if this is what everyone ought to think about the BNP or anyone concerned about extreme immigration:

Rather than isolated, they seemed well connected to their local communities. Rather than irrational, they had a clearly defined and coherent set of goals. Rather than psychologically damaged, they seemed balanced, reasonable and articulate.

How many people outside the far Left and the BBC and Leftoid media believe that anyone concerned about extreme immigration must be psychologically damaged? As I said, very revealing of the mindset. Goodwin spends another paragraph on his realization that not everyone he spoke to was a Nazi. Then he again uses Sharon as a launching point to show how these concerns are spreading. And he continues to use the “extremist” label.

Driving back from that first interview with Sharon, my mind wandered to my own grandparents who had expressed similar though not as extreme views about the scale and pace of immigration. I used to ask them why they never supported parties like the BNP, or the old National Front and they would look at me as though I were mad: “The Blackshirts?’, they would say, “oh no, we’d never vote for that lot.”

Implicit in their reaction is a sentiment firmly entrenched in the collective British mindset – that no matter how bad things get, Britain is immune to the appeals of extremists. It is difficult to quantify, but centres on the notion there is just something fundamentally “unBritish” about supporting extremists.

The thought occurs at this point that at no time does Goodwin discuss any of the other platforms of the BNP, e.g. Socialism, anit-war isolationism, or deporting Jamaicans as well as all Muslims. If one supports even a single one of their notions, one is then labeled an extremist. It’s the intellectual fascism of the Left which causes this kind of thinking. One must not hold a single unapproved thought, and any thought which isn’t approved by the bien pensants is “extreme”. There is no reasoned argument, no middle ground permitted.

And so the point of this Viewpoint is that this “extremism” is spreading much farther than we might think.

But is Britain really immune to a successful far right party? I think it would be mistaken to assume that this tradition has deprived extremists of fertile soil.

When we look at the evidence there is a large reservoir of potential support for a far right party. Large numbers of us have become concerned about the issue of immigration – at one point, it was more important to us than education, crime and the NHS.

In fact, one out of every five of us thought it was the most important issue facing the country. And the concern was not simply about competition over jobs or council housing. Surveys told us that two-thirds of the population thought Britain was “losing its culture” because of immigration.

Note the clever academic use of the first-person plural. In this way, Goodwin cements the notion that more and more ordinary people – possibly some of your neighbors, friends, or even relations – might be susceptible to this extremist thought. Fortunately, he’s much sharper and more honest than your average BBC journo regarding the actual concern about extreme immigration:

Also, those who are concerned about immigration are not concerned simply about traditional immigration. Significant numbers of us are also anxious over the presence and perceived compatibility of settled Muslim communities.

“Settled”. I like that. Presumably that includes “no-go areas”. Are those merely “perceived”? The mindset is revealed again.

At the time that two BNP members were elected to the European Parliament in 2009, over two-fifths of the population expressed agreement with the suggestion that even in its milder forms Islam poses a danger to Western civilisation.

Now we get the conflation of concern over extreme immigration and the refusal of some to join society with religious bigotry. It’s a slippery slope from here, really. Goodwin begins to attack the credibility of those who express concern about extreme immigration.

Muslims now find themselves at the core of a new and potent far right narrative, which vilifies Muslim communities while claiming to defend traditions of tolerance, gender equality and the rights of homosexuals. It downplays socially unacceptable arguments about race in favour of more acceptable arguments about the compatibility of values and cultures.

In other words, any of you here who complain that the BBC tends to play down or ignore how the more conservative, fundamentalist Muslims treat women and homosexuals are really just bigots using a smokescreen. You don’t really care about women getting acid thrown on their faces or young girls sent off to Pakistan to be forced into copulation with a middle-aged man, or killed by their fathers and brothers for being seen with a non-Muslim, or about regular executions of homosexuals. That’s all a facade used to slip your bigoted beliefs in under the door.

It is quite easy to see how this argument could be implanted in Britain. Imagine a far right populist who was free of extremist baggage and who talked about the need to oppose Islam in order to protect British traditions of parliamentary democracy, or who rallied against Muslims while proclaiming to defend the rights of women, homosexuals or civil liberties.

“Far right”. If you have any concern about extreme immigration, or that honor killings, abuse of women, no-go areas, the transformation of your neighborhood into something in which you are made to feel alien, or even just your local shop no longer carrying your favorites in favor of comestibles from another country, you are “far right”, and extremist. Again, no reasoned argument is allowed, no middle ground permitted. You’re either with Goodwin, or against common decency.

The rest of the piece is more of the same, but the last line is very amusingly blinkered, in which Goodwin drives home his theme about the BNP message spreading far and wide:

My view is that if they were free of baggage and political amateurism they would be met with significant support.

He’s taking the position that this is only about how the modern BNP is attempting to re-create its image, and distance itself from the fascists of distant memory. But it’s clearly much, much more than that. The concern about extreme immigration goes far beyond people how identify as “far right”, and that scares him. Goodwin seems not to understand that people can draw the conclusion that unfettered swarms of fundamentalists from medieval or even more primitive societies will have difficulty integrating and will do what most every other immigrant group has done historically: live amongst their own kind and attempt to recreate a bit of the old country in their new home. This is normal behavior for all immigrant groups, but becomes a real problem when the incentive to join the society of their new home – even only peripherally, in the manner of many ultra-orthodox Jews, for example – is not only removed but anyone who asks about it is scolded and ostracized. Yet Goodwin and the BBC believe that this is only a “far right” viewpoint, and one that can really only be spread by “far right” extremist activists.

The other problem is that he insists on associating concern about a single issue with all the rest of the “baggage”. Goodwin will not address the issue of extreme immigration except to tar anyone concerned about it as being “far right”. Debate is stifled yet again. And this, sadly, is exactly the BBC Narrative on the issue.

PS: Goodwin is described as an academic who is “an expert in electoral behaviour and extremism at the University of Nottingham”. Curious how his books only on the BNP are enough to secure his bona fides as an expert on extremism. Is there no extremism from the other side? Or his he an expert only on one side of the spectrum? I think we know the answer to that, and I won’t hold my breath waiting for a “Viewpoint” piece coming from the other side.

This heartfelt comment by Jarwill101 on the Open Thread deserves a main post. I liked it, and I’m taking the liberty of reproducing it here. Hope that’s okay.

“Yvette Cooper’s nauseating admission, ‘We got things wrong over immigration’, has to be challenged. No, Yvette, credit where credit’s due, given New Labour’s avowed policy, as revealed by speech writer, Andrew Neather, you got things right over immigration. You wanted to obliterate the Brtish nation state as rapidly as possible & mass immigration was your weapon of choice. And the beeboids filled the atmosphere with an enveloping, rainbow-tinted iCloud of touchy-feely propaganda to speed the transformation on its way. Never mind the quality of the incomers, forget their, very often, utter unsuitability, their arrogant refusal to integrate, their immediate reliance on benefits, their propensity for criminality/terrorism. Our towns & cities are now descending into the Second World, a volatile, crowded, violent waiting-room, before the descent into the Third. Places like Tower Hamlets/Haringey should be the jewels in Yvette’s papier-mache crown. You, Yvette, & your cultural Marxist destructors have ensured that there will never be a harmonious society in this country again. Your job is done, don’t be self-effacing about it. Step out into our wonderful, ‘diverse’ streets, especially at night, rejoice in the ‘enrichment’. Perhaps a kindly passerby will help you count the holes in you face, help you into the ambulance. I’ll wave to you from the river, upon which the indigenous people, & the hard-working, law-abiding immigrants, have been sold down in exchange for the advancement of your own worthless, traitorous little soul.”

Bravo!I would just add though, that the Labour Party’s immigration mea culpa still avoids confronting their most treasonous ‘mistake’. As far as I’m aware, the type of immigration that they own up to ‘getting wrong’ is the, cheap labour, job-undercutting type, the hardworking Polish builder, and the Eastern European economic migrant. They serve as a scapegoat for the resentment many people feel over the other kind of immigration. The kind that dare not speak its name, the immigration that is fundamentally at odds with British values, the immigration that really undermines our way of life.

Always good for the BBC to start the day with some good old fashioned NHS shroud waving, Check out the link on the Midwife shortages caused by the fearsome Osborne cuts that are now “risking lives”in England. One of the reasons for this, according to BBC Today, is the increasing birth-rate in parts of England. Curious how there is a certain coyness about where those areas might be and which communities may be creating this unprecedented pressure on Midwifery. I do seem to recall that indigenous UK birth rate is at an all-time low but the BBC chooses to park the issue there. Do you think that under this story is another story which the BBC has no intention of discussing. If so, isn’t that rather disingenuous of the State Broadcaster?

Last night’s Any Questions panel spoke for multiculturalism, women, and the Arab Spring. The solitary male member, if you’ll excuse the expression, was Jehangir Malik OBE, UK Director of Islamic Relief, who was roped in to opine on behalf of the Arab World.

The panellists still spoke elegiacally of the Arab Spring, which, for them still heralds the dawning of a new age of enlightenment. It’s just as if they’d never heard of the disconcerting rise of Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, or listened to any of the creeping doubts that are beginning to emerge everywhere but in their own consciousness. They seem a bit like the befuddled fugitive who hasn’t discovered that the war he’s been hiding from for the last decade ended years ago.

In this vein, they expressed undiluted optimism over the Arab Spring, and deep joy at the diversity and multiculturalism in the UK.

The thing that was omitted from the discourse was, of course, Islam.

Diversity is undoubtedly beneficial. I myself am diverse. Variety is the spice of life, and variegated skin-colour, racial origin, a multiplicity of traditions and customs are all jolly good ingredients when added to the mix in correct, proportional measure.

But political correctness ignores the essential truth, which is that the benefits immigration might bring to the UK must outweigh and not overwhelm the very things that make it an attractive destination. There comes a point where those who ‘flock’ from far and wide to partake, begin to resemble tourists who, by sheer numbers, wreck the beauty and tranquility of the tourist attractions they visit, robbing them of their attractiveness in the process. Before people recognise what is happening, too many are profiting from the status quo, so don’t want to admit there’s a problem.

The Islamic faith may well be beneficial in potentially volatile Islamic regimes which are kept on an even keel by people we consider tyrants and despots. They control populations by fear, as do religious leaders who stunt the imagination by persuading vulnerable people that this life is a mere preparation for the next.

Refusing to get to grips with the fact that a functioning democratic society requires the population to be reasonably free from constraints that interfere with the ability to think, is a huge handicap. That’s what political correctness does to us. It won’t permit open discussion, and explains the puzzling tyranny of the P.C. edict, which proclaims ” to be good, one must be non-judgmental.” That leads to moral equivalence, which in turn might explain the frequent appearance on our screens, courtesy of the BBC, of Abdel al-Bari Atwan. Mr. Atwan has been endorsing last week’s attacks near Eilat in which Israelis were murdered.

‘The Eilat operation, as I see it, corrected the course of the Arab revolutions and refocused them on the most dangerous disease, namely the Israeli tyranny. This disease is the cause of all the defects that have afflicted the region for the past 65 years…’

CiFWatch, the watchdog website that monitors the Guardian’s increasingly overt antisemitism, is concerned about Atwan’s frequent contributions to Comment is Free. The Guardian represents the intelligentsia, many of whom have travelled so far to the left that they’ve gone right round the back and out the other side, having picked up radical Islam along the way, like a burr on your woolly jumper. How did that happen? It’s inexplicable to many of us, and apparently to them. At least, I haven’t heard a convincing explanation so far.

The BBC’s fondness for hiring Abdel al-Bari Atwan is clear. He’s never off our screens. Opining on this and that, his eyes bulging preternaturally, he’s regarded as an authority on all things Arab. Springs, Uprisings, and Resistance? Ask Abdel. His speciality is demonising Israel and fantasising about it being nuked.

Is he impartial? Is he sane? Are his prejudices balanced on the air, in the short term or the long term, by opposing views? Are his views given undue respect and credibility?

Why does the BBC give inflammatory, racist, antisemitic and warmongering individuals the oxygen of publicity on programmes like Dateline or Newsnight? We know the BBC is mischievous and likes a bit of a barney for the ratings. But this is serious. They might want to try and make sparks fly, but sparks have a habit of getting out of control if they’re given free rein.

Any Questions? Here’s one. Does the panel think the BBC is after a conflagration?

A caller has phoned in to Any Answers to self-flagellate over our colonial past, and has invented a new despot named ‘Dugaffi.” I despair.

StewGreen November 19, 2018 at 8:44 pm on Start the Week Thread 19 November 2018And since every day is #InternationalSnowFlake Day maybe the BBC should be less like the stereo type of a snowflake...

StewGreen November 19, 2018 at 8:41 pm on Start the Week Thread 19 November 2018BBC Scotland says men should be less man-like on International Men's day https://twitter.com/bbcthesocial/status/1064556658041544704